Tieto

Finland and corporate origins

Tieto started its business operations in Espoo, Finland in 1968 under the name Tietotehdas Oy. During the company's first years, it developed and maintained IT systems mainly for the Union Bank of Finland (Suomen Yhdyspankki, today Nordea), its customers and a few forestry companies.

The customer base of the company grew during the 1970s to represent several other industries, and operations were organized according to these verticals. During the 1990s, the company experienced rapid growth through a number of acquisitions, mergers and strategic alliances. The company's name was changed to Tieto in 1998. In 1999, Tieto and the Swedish Enator corporation merged to form TietoEnator.

New corporate brand and name in 2008

On 1 December 2008, the company re-launched the corporate brand and marketing name Tieto (which means knowledge in Finnish). The official registered name became Tieto Corporation, and the corporation is led from its Helsinki headquarters. The President and CEO of Tieto is Kimmo Alkio, as of November 2011.

Defining growth areas and investments in key services

In Tieto’s 1–12/2014 interim report, the company defined its future high growth offerings and investments in other key services:

Investments in future high-growth offerings

Investments in other key services

Serial entrepreneur Taneli Tikka appointed to lead Industrial Internet start-up

In May 2014, a Finnish serial entrepreneur Taneli Tikka was appointed to lead Tieto's Industrial Internet business. Industrial Internet is one of Tieto's internal start-ups and key growth areas.

Customer Experience Management start-up

Tieto launched the internal Customer Experience Management start-up in April 2014 as one of the company’s key growth investments. Mikko Leinonen was appointed to lead the second internal start-up of Tieto as Head of Customer Experience Management.

Launch of Security Services start-up

Tieto launched its internal startup Security Services in January 2016 to offer digital security services and solutions to enterprises and public sector organizations. Markus Melin from F-Secure, a global Finnish security company, was appointed to lead the start-up. Security Services is Tieto’s third internal start-up. The others are Industrial Internet, led by Taneli Tikka, and Customer Experience Management, led by Mikko Leinonen.

Smilehouse

In December 2015, Tieto signed an agreement to acquire Smilehouse, the largest Finnish solution provider of multichannel commerce with operations primarily in Finland and Sweden. The acquisition was made to strengthen Tieto’s position as one of the leading Nordic players in digital Customer Experience Management and to support the company’s aim to accelerate growth in this market. Before the acquisition, Smilehouse’s annual sales amounted to approximately EUR 10 million. Smilehouse was consolidated into Tieto on 1 December 2015.

Imano

In November 2015, Tieto acquired Imano AB, a Swedish consulting company offering consulting and digitalization services to paper and forestry industries. The acquisition was made to support Tieto’s objective of becoming the largest IT services provider in the paper and forestry industries in Sweden and Norway. The company’s revenue in 2014 was EUR 7.1 million.

Software Innovation

In June 2015, Tieto signed an agreement to acquire Software Innovation, a software company in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) business in the Nordic countries. The aim of the acquisition was to increase Tieto’s capabilities in enterprise content management across the Nordic countries. In 2014, Software Innovation’s net sales amounted to approximately EUR 41 million with an operating margin (EBIT) of 12.5%. In August 2015, The Norwegian Competition Authority approved the acquisition.

New headquarters

In December 2015, Tieto announced the opening of its new headquarters in Keilaniemi, Espoo, Finland. The office spaces in Keilaniemi are designed for flexible ways of working, with open spaces, co-creative areas and innovation hubs. The move to Keilaniemi is planned to take place in stages, starting in the fourth quarter of 2016. Since Tieto’s rental agreement in Kilo, Espoo ends in December 2016, the company expects that the move will have both logistical and financial benefits.

International operations

Currently, Tieto operates in more than 20 countries, with Finland, Norway and Sweden as the main markets. The company’s major delivery centres are located in the Czech Republic, Poland, India and China. Tieto also has operations in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Malaysia, the Netherlands and the United States.

Tieto Norway

Tieto operates in Norway as the subsidiary Tieto Norway AS. The business in Norway was developed through a series of acquisitions, starting in 1989 when Enator AB acquired the Norwegian IT consulting company ISI AS.

Other significant acquisitions were Ementor Financial Systems in February 2002, followed by DaWinci Services AS in December of that year. The latter acquisition provided control over the offshore Personnel Transportation & Tracking Solution, giving Tieto Norway a 100% market share of systems for operating the Norwegian Continental Shelf personnel movements.

In 2010, there was a major demerger by a group of Tieto Norway employees that spun off the company Hytracc Consulting. The new company has established partner offices in the vicinity of the Tieto's offices, hence both companies provide services for shared customers of the Tieto Energy Components system.

Lawsuit claims in Norway 2007

In 2005, the Western Norway Regional Health Authority, Norwegian Helse Vest RHF, signed an agreement with TietoEnator Norway for the delivery of a system for Electronic health records. By the end of 2007, Helse Vest RHF concluded its customer relationship with the company and announced a lawsuit against TietoEnator. They claimed that they had spent time, resources and efforts on the initial project without seeing TietoEnator able to deliver, and thus they were going to claim compensation from TietoEnator. "The word disaster is appropriate", Eric Hansen of Helse Vest RHF expressed to Finansavisen. Likewise, the Southern Norway Regional Health Authority, Helse Sør, experienced their frame agreement from 2004 to make no deliveries, and Helse Sør therefore also considered legal action. For the 2007 fiscal year, TietoEnator Norway recorded a loss of NOK 124,336,000 (according to the net loss indicated on their financial statement, as reported to the Brønnøysund Register Centre).

While TietoEnator Norway employed more than 1000 people in 2002, there was a further decline in the number of Tieto Norway employees from 669 to 477 between 2007 and 2011.

Tieto Sweden

The current business activities in Sweden are undertaken by the subsidiary Tieto Sweden AB based on a restructuring of the former Enator corporation. Enator corporation started in 1977 as a consultant firm created to support the Pronator company with software and project management. In 1990, it merged with Modulföretagen, adopting its logo from Modul and name from Enator. Enator grew to approximately 650 consultants in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. In 1993 it was included in the AxData group as a stand-alone company but was sold to Celsius in 1995. The subsidiary's name, Enator, was applied to the whole group in 1995 when Celsius AB, a publicly traded Swedish company, merged the IT operations it had acquired between 1991 and 1994. Until 1994, there were IT operations in three separate subsidiaries: Telub, Enator and Dialog. The merger of the three subsidiaries led to a restructuring program in 1997. In spring 1996, the corporation was listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange under the name of Enator.

During 1998, Enator conducted a series of acquisitions to strengthen the company's public sector exposure. The company acquired 51% of shares in the Stockholm-based consulting firm Programmera. In addition, the company acquired two small IT companies – Kvatro Telecom in Trondheim, Norway, and Soft Project in Hamburg, Germany – and divested from operations in Enator Telecom Mechanics. In April 1999, Enator acquired NetDesign in Denmark. After the Enator–Tieto merger in July 1999, the Enator brand was discontinued.

The data center failure in Sweden

On 25 November 2011, there was a hardware failure in one of Tieto's Swedish data centers, which affected approximately 50 of its clients, including Apoteket (a national pharmaceuticals retail firm, for whom e-prescriptions were out of service), Bilprovningen (a Swedish motor vehicle inspection firm, which was forced to perform inspections with manual support), SBAB Bank and the Stockholm Municipality school web site. Kristina Westerlind, Head of Marketing and Communications at Tieto Sweden, commented on the incident to Dagens Nyheter: "It is a hardware failure that is very difficult to predict at this time how long it takes to restore everything to normal. It can go fast or it could last a long time." On 30 November, Tieto services for Apoteket e-prescriptions and SBAB were recovered and operational again. By 13 December, virtually all services were back to normal operations. Confidentiality agreements with customers prevented Tieto from revealing exactly who was affected by this incident. On 22 February 2012, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency published the report on Reflections on community safety and preparedness for serious IT incidents In March 2012, Tieto released a report investigating the incident.

Corporate culture and work environment

Tieto claims that working at the company should be enjoyable and rewarding and Tieto scores a grade of 3.2 in the scale from 1 to 5, assessed by their own employees, on the jobs and career community site Glassdoor.com. Glassdoor has listed Tieto as one of the 25 companies in the world with the best work-life balance. The ranking was made based on what employees voluntarily and anonymously have shared about their job and what the company is like when it comes to work-life balance. Tieto was no 17 on the list and received positive feedback for offering challenging jobs and great atmosphere. Also flexibility and mobility were mentioned: “Every place is a workplace, and the office is only one of them”.

Environmental achievements

Social achievements

At the end of 2011, a Supplier Code was created to complement the Code of Conduct in use. The Supplier Code aims to sharpen control of suppliers and partners in order to prevent corruption and support human and labour rights. In 2015, 31% of all Tieto's regular suppliers have accepted the Supplier Code, representing 81% of total spend.

Several social sponsoring activities (both financial and pro-bono) were conducted during 2015. The main recipient of philanthropic donations in 2015 was the Red Cross for their support to refugees. Tieto has also continued to support the Identity Foundation´s mobile learning centres for underprivileged children in Pune, India.

Energy Components

Energy Components (EC) is a Hydrocarbon accounting software product used to allocate units of aliquots of produced hydrocarbons back to its origination based on their current disposition like a temporary storage tank or a sales point. It holds accounts for oil and gas ownership for the hydrocarbons based on the production field equity share of every single partner company. The product monitors hydrocarbons from the start of movements in the production process following the streams through transportation, storages and sales. Benefits of the EC product includes oil and gas production scheduling and petroleum reservoir management, giving transparent and auditable accounts, it reports production data to regulatory authorities and partners, counteracting potential for disputes between partners and with governments. Tieto is providing services for planning, design, customizations and configuration of product installations, and also gives lifecycle support. Customers share their experiences and maintains common interests through EC User Forum. In April 2012, more than 100 customer representatives from more than 20 countries participated in the annual gathering.

The product has origins in the Prosty-system, developed internally at Statoil, which Statoil conveyed to Tieto for commercialization. Competitors include Field Operations & Production Accounting solutions from Merrick Systems, Inc., P2 Energy Solutions, EnergySys and software from WellPoint Systems, Avocet from Schlumberger.

Energy Components (EC) is also the publicly known naming on the Tieto Norway entity that delivers the EC and PTS/DaWinci products and related services in partnership with the breakaway company Hytracc Consulting.

Personnel Transportation & Tracking

Personnel Transportation & Tracking (PTS/DaWinci) is a software product that helps oil companies to schedule, execute and account for the personnel transportations between ports and locations that need mobilized crew in connection with operations in the oil and gas industry. Transportation type may include inter field shuttles. Ports may be land-based heliports. Operational locations may be any type of offshore platform, vessel, FPSO, or onshore plant. The product tracks personnel movements and assist platform management at offshore locations in administering the emergency preparedness, the accommodation units and supports the lifeboat allocation and muster drilling.

PTS/DaWinci offers publicly displaying of schedules and itineraries, self-service bookings and check-in for end-users.

Benefits of the product includes updated Personnel On Board information, optimized helicopter utilizations, cost allocation between user companies on shared flights, and adherence to regulatory emergency preparedness functions.

The PTS/DaWinci product origins from a system developed as a joint venture between Statoil and Hydro Oil & Gas that Tieto Norway took over in an acquisition of the company DaWinci Services AS in 2002. Competitors include Collabro Personnel-On-Board Management, Asset Integrity Personnel On Board (POB), and the Logistics Management System (LMS).

Industry expertise

Specific expertise areas offered to customer services are within Banking and insurance; Telecom, automotive and media; Healthcare & welfare; Forest, Energy, Manufacturing; Retail and logistics; Public; ICT operation management.